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The court must not have looked very hard. "Let us be very clear: TikTok does not remove content based on sensitivities related to China. We have never been ask
by Leary 2y ago
The court must not have looked very hard.
"Let us be very clear: TikTok does not remove content based on sensitivities related to China. We have never been asked by the Chinese government to remove any content and we would not do so if asked. Period. Our US moderation team, which is led out of California, reviews content for adherence to our US policies – just like other US companies in our space. We are not influenced by any foreign government, including the Chinese government; TikTok does not operate in China, nor do we have any intention of doing so in the future."
https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/statement-on-tiktoks-content-moderation-and-data-security-practices/ https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/statement-on-tiktoks-conte...
"58. Have members of the Chinese Communist Party, or other members of the Chinese
government, asked ByteDance or TikTok employees to heat content?
TikTok does not heat content in the U.S. at the request of any government, including the Chinese
Communist Party. TikTok may promote or "heat" specific content (including, e.g., promoting the
video of an artist who will be hosting a concert on TikTok Live) in line with company content
policies to support the inclusion of diverse and high-quality content on the platform. A content
operations team will review heating requests submitted by a limited number of cross-functional
partners with access to the heating request, and the Content Operations team will either approve
or reject the request based on their assessment of whether it follows the platform's best practices
in support of content diversity and quality (including, e.g., being engaging and meaningful and
focusing on timely/relevant content) and business objectives. An audit function, that is in the
process of being refined, will regularly review the heating request process to ensure internal
compliance with company policies. Even if the request is approved, increasing visibility or video
views ("VV") is not guaranteed as the recommendation system will not heat low quality content
(e.g, reposted or irrelevant content). Heating impacts less than 1% of VV in the US."
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/IF00/20230323/115519/HHRG-118-IF00-Wstate-ChewS-20230323-SD030.pdf https://docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/IF00/20230323/115519/HHRG...
- WillPostForFood 2y agoThe court must not have looked very hard. The court isn't an investigative body, they take the evidence submitted. Perhaps TikTok was more careful to be truthful in court submissions than press releases.
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y agoEspecially since what they said in the press doesn't even matter. The models come from China. You don't need to ask the US team to silence and amplify certain topics when your models do it for you. If you know this is happening, you tell the US gov it isn't happening, and they find out it is - you're in for a bad time. I'm not sure it's physically possible for a CEO to bury their head in the sand deep enough to plead ignorance in this situation.
- sanderjd 2y agoYeah I'm pretty flabbergasted that the commenter who posted this press language thinks it's a disproof of the issue rather than a transparently carefully worded statement that you could drive a truck of algorithmic manipulation through.
- HaZeust 2y agoI mean, it's a lie by omission - which fundamentally needs familiarity (and oftentimes intermediate+ knowledge on a matter) to spot and scrutinize. The people who write these press releases are led by smart people that often talk to smart lawyers - it's easy to get lost in the sneaky language sauce.
- lukan 2y agoWould this really work? Hardcoded models? When you want to influence a certain topic in a new way, on recent events - this means a new model needs to be created and adjusted all the time. I assume they rather use a complex traditional algorithm that can be tweaked - and if it is in use in US - it can be verified. If it is run through china, then things are clear as well. Do we have technical insights how it works?
- floatingtorch 2y agoYou can simply use specific training examples that teach the model what you please. Eg. a set of examples which lead ranking/retreival/filtering models. The models are already online training and weights likely updated every ~1 hour ( or even less). It’d be easy to go from a set of “moderators” who find examples and use it to query related content and use it as negative training samples. Just a guess.
- alwa 2y agoI think those kind of answers might be exactly what the court is talking about. You don’t have to “remove” something to influence its reach. They’re denying stuff that doesn’t matter while leaving plenty of room for the kind of behavior that does. To the question that you quoted: asked a question in the past tense, they responded in the present. Asked whether individual people had made requests, they answered whether they currently act on government requests. It reads as such a non-denial denial.
- MisterKent 2y agoSearch tiananmen on any app and then on TikTok. Regardless of their testimony, it doesn't take much to show that it isn't 100% of the truth.
- beastcoast 2y agoI just did though - got lots of results about the massacre. Not sure what you’re alluding to.
- fluidcruft 2y agoThings can be manipulated without being removed. This sort of word substitution is the type of misdirection "never squarely denies" could be referencing. They're asked about manipulation and they reply about removal. Removal is merely one type of manipulation. For example something like permanently hiding content while keeping it in the database isn't a removal.
- jsyang00 2y ago"We are not influenced by any foreign government, including the Chinese government." It is laughable to suggest that the basis for this ruling is anything less than fear and paranoia about Chinese government softpower. Nothing they could have said, and no fact they could bring to bear, would change the outcome of the court, which has been predetermined, for better or worse, by the current American political climate.
- UltraSane 2y agoSearch tiananmen on any app and then on TikTok. It is ridiculous that China can block all these sites but the US can't block TikTok Facebook (and Messenger) Instagram Pinterest Twitter Blogger Tumblr Tinder Blogspot New York Times The Financial Times The Economist The Wall Street Journal Bloomberg Google News Wikipedia YouTube Netflix Vimeo Google Search Bing Yahoo DuckDuckGo Messenger (and Facebook) WeChat SnapChat Telegram Signal
- llamaimperative 2y agoI'm no fan of TikTok but this is a really shitty argument. China can do it because China doesn't have the First Amendment, which is, you know, sort of the whole point...
- Wowfunhappy 2y agoBut in practice, that means the only global social network—one that is accessible in both the US and in China—is one that agrees to Chinese censorship laws. IMO, this is a massive backfire to the purpose of freedom of speech.
- CPLX 2y agoIf a court of appeals says a party to a case "has not denied" something they are speaking specifically about the record of the trial being presented to them.
- epolanski 2y agoNot sure why are you getting down voted to express an informative take. It feels like I'm on Reddit and not in a place that should be more intellectually active and open.
- nullc 2y agoPublic comments not made in court are worthless as a defense. They didn't make those same remarks in court where they could be forced to answer questions about their meaning and where the speaker could be sent to prison for knowingly lying about them.